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What Goes On? Ayris, Godwin

Well, the reissue of my Kindle novella – One Day in the Life of Jason Dean – has just been released by the brilliant Near to the Knuckle, and April Skies – the sequel to my debut novel –Abide With Me – is due for publication in both paperback and Kindle versions on the 7th April. It’s taken me the best part of three years to write, so it’ll be a fantastic feeling to finally have it out skating in the ether. April Skies carries on two years after the end of Abide With Me, following John as he attempts to navigate the perils of adult life. He does his best, bless him, but everyone has a history. And with a history like John’s, the past is never far behind.

Here’s a little extract:

The bloke next to me’s readin the back pages. Looks over the top and asks me if Thommo’s mental. I says he is.

‘Always been like that, has he?’ the bloke says, puttin his paper on his lap.

‘Not always,’ I says. ‘Glue. Fucked him right up.’

‘He want a sweet?’ the bloke says.

I tap Thommo on the shoulder.

‘You want a sweet, Thommo?’ I says.

Thommo don’t even turn round.

‘He’s all right, mate,’ I says. ‘Cheers, anyway.’

The bloke opens up a pack of Refreshers, chucks half of em in his mouth in one go, picks up his paper, and carries on readin.

I’m watchin Thommo lookin out the window, the fields goin by like they was movin faster than the train. And I’m wonderin if Thommo knows this time tomorrow he’ll be back in the nuthouse with the screamin and the bangin and the walls, and that the fields he’s lookin at now won’t even know he was ever here.

It’s still an hour before kick-off. We’re up at the Holte End, me and Thommo, this massive fuck off terrace behind the goal. There’s Hammers comin in all the time, fillin it right up.

Thommo’s lookin at me with this stupid grin on his face. It’s the same grin he had as a kid, but it don’t mean nothing no more. It’s just his mouth doin a shape.

Apart from the writing, I’m also teaching novel writing for a second year on an Arts Council funded project for Barking and Dagenham Council, entitled Pen to Print. The idea is to take adults through the process of writing a novel.

It’s brilliant fun, and unbelievably rewarding.

So, that’s me 🙂

Bio: As well as being the author of One Day in the Life of Jason Dean, Ian has forty short stories published online and in print. His debut novel – Abide With Me – was published in 2012 by Caffeine Nights Publishing, and its sequel – April Skies – is to be published in April 2016.

Ian is a qualified counsellor, a creative writing tutor and runs his own editing business.

At weekends he works in a care home for adults with learning difficulties and mental health issues, whilst also indulging in his lifelong passion for the Mighty Dagenham and Redbridge Football Club.

Ian lives in Harold Hill, Essex, with his girlfriend, Karen, his three children, Mollie, Charlie, and Summer, and two guinea pigs by the name of Sanchez and Bob.

My novelSavage Highwaywas published this January. It is about abductions in Arizona, lawlessness, the criminal mind and revenge. Here is some Blurb.

Women are disappearing on the highway, a drifter hunts the men who raped her, and a journalist discovers law has broken down in the area.

On a remote highway in Arizona women are disappearing at truck stops. Journalist Johnny Sullivan travels to the area to investigate. He encounters hitchhiker Patty, who is being hunted by violent trucker Red. Patty tells Johnny of the local myth of the maniac trucker. Johnny also meets Valentino de La Cruz, a mysterious Mexican who is looking for his missing sister.

Valentino is having an affair with Natasha, the wife of recently murdered businessman, Theodore Mills, whose wealth funds the corrupt police force in the area. The local Highway Patrol is run by sexually sadistic Sam Roche and Franklin Norman and they want to put an end to Johnny’s snooping. Marshall Simmons knows a lot about the goings on in the area, and has a young woman captive in a house. He is reprogramming her identity. Meanwhile Johnny discovers that years previously serial killer Donald Lake disappeared in the area while in transit between prisons. And it seems he had police help. But what is being done to the women? And who is running the criminal organisation that controls the area? Savage Highways is about lawlessness and the hunt for justice in a no man’s land. Pedal to the floor all the way, the narrative speeds towards its stunning and unforeseeable conclusion.

The year has really started with a bang and looks to continue that way, with the publication of my tenth novel,Ersatz Worldthis month. It is about the age of surveillance and the rise of the digital revolution and how that may be eroding identity and be part of a wider and more sinister social engineering programme with the ultimate goal of cloning humanity. Here is some Blurb.

Samuel Verso is an ordinary, old-fashioned publisher trying to resist the lure of e-books. As his wife fills the hallway with prosthetic limbs and his business partner is replaced with an exact replica he realises that his problems run deeper than books on a computer screen. But it is only when he is serially abducted, beaten and accused of terrorism that he understands it isn’t that he’s paranoid – it’s that he isn’t paranoid enough.

Next month my novel, The Pure And The Hated is published. It is a Vermont based novel, a state I know well, and is about the nature of forgiveness in a corrupt world, redemption, the extent to which we can know anyone, even in a family structure, and moral compromise, something I think is definitively Noir and two words I think about a lot when writing Noir.

In June my novel Disembodied is published. It is narrated in four different genres and is about surveillance and espionage.

I will have up to eight novels released this year. In October

Buffalo And Sour Mash is published. It is about a man called Murphy Stubbs, who wants to bring the Wild West to Surrey. He organises an all-female rodeo show as part of his own dark and Southern psychosis. Coming all the way from Oklahoma, he brings with him a level of anarchy that rips through the tidy lives of the locals. Then there is Rhonda, his rodeo star and the woman who shakes it up. High drama in Surrey as it is transformed into a Southern state by a lunatic. It is a novel full of hustlers and low lifes. I am currently writing a sequel to bothWrong Crowd and it, involving the central characters of each novel.

My first novel Apostle Rising, is being translated into Slovenian and will be published in Slovenian in August or September.

I will also have a literary novel called The Artist published at some point.

Bio: Richard Godwin is the critically acclaimed author of Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City, Meaningful Conversations, Confessions Of A Hit Man, Paranoia And The Destiny Programme, Wrong Crowd, Savage Highway, Ersatz World, The Pure And The Hated, Disembodied, Buffalo And Sour Mash and Locked In Cages. His stories have been published in numerous paying magazines and over 34 anthologies, among them an anthology of his stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard Man, and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Mystery, alongside Lee Child. He was born in London and lectured in English and American literature at the University of London. You can find out more about him at his website www.richardgodwin.net , where you can read a full list of his works, and where you can also read his Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse, his highly popular and unusual interviews with other authors.